Training Materials

How to Influence People:
Get the Most With the Least Effort

1-Day Course Containing Many Interactive Exercises

Fully Customisable Training Course Material: Description

“Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy”

Aristotle

Have you ever felt that you could have performed a lot better after you had a conversation with someone? Did you wonder why you didn’t handle it better? Have you ever said ‘Yes’ to someone’s request when what you really wanted to say was ‘No’? You deal with people professionally and personally everyday. Any new skill that improves your communication with your colleagues, bosses, clients and your family can have profound effects on your self-esteem, personality and subsequently your productivity. We all know how miscommunication can lead to inefficiencies and cost us dearly.

Influencing is a skill that we simply learn as we grow up by copying others around us or based on our experience in life. However, this can be limiting as we may never come across certain techniques and fail to understand that there could be an easier way to influence others. Fortunately, a systematic training such as this course can significantly help individuals to become better at this skill.

The ability to influence others is an incredibly important skill. Business environments can benefit from the existence of people who are well versed in the art of influence since they can handle situations better, are more emotionally skilled and can mitigate conflicts or difficult situations quickly.

How does knowing how to influence others help you in life?

Sell your ideas or products to others more naturally

Lead others more effectively

Teach or train others more easily

Become more productive as a results of better communication with others

Example

Let’s consider an example. Suppose a supervisor wants to get a member of his staff to come to work on time. The first attempt may go like this:

Supervisor: “Jane, I want you to be on time when you come to the office!”

Jane agrees, makes an effort to be on time next time, though after a couple of weeks falls back to her original habit. The supervisor calls her again and says,

Supervisor: “Jane, this is not acceptable. We had a chat about this and you agreed to sort it out. If you are late again, I have no choice to reduce your salary or you need to find yourself another job!”

Jane is completely taken back by this. She simply didn’t think her behaviour was so serious or that it deserved such a harsh reaction. Although she is put off by it, she starts to think that maybe she is not in the right job after all. Perhaps it is time to move on and show this unforgiving supervisor that this is not the right way to handle people.

As you can see, this story did not have a happy ending. A mishandling by her supervisor (along with other inefficient communication skills he might have had) led Jane to decide that this company was not worth working for.

This situation could have been completely reversed if Jane’s supervisor was aware of many other influence techniques he could have used in this scenario. In this example, he used “Logic”and then went straight to “Force” which is a last resort influence technique to be used only when all other techniques have failed. He could have employed many other techniques in between these to achieve his objective of correcting Jane’s behaviour while keeping her happy and motivated. It turns out that it is actually easy to use these range of techniques and we only need to train ourselves to be constantly aware of them and do not let emotions to take over our decision making process. This course systematically teaches the delegates about these techniques and prepares them to face real-world situations armed with these influence skills.

To become better at influencing, delegates need to learn and practice the skills over and over again until the skills become second nature. This course contains theoretical content along with many exercises designed to help the delegates to achieve this and understand that there are many ways to influence others.

In this course, a variety of psychological techniques are presented and discussed. It includes a range of role plays and group discussions that will help delegates to learn how to change opinions, avoid conflicts through positive influence and simply be in control.

In this course delegates will learn:

Strategy

What is the best strategy for long term influence on someone else?

What is the importance of goals and how does this affect your influencing strategy?

What does it mean to be diplomatic and how does it help you to influence others?

Influence Techniques

How to gain commitment without using power, position or status

Use a variety of diplomatic techniques when talking to deliver your messages softer and more positively

How to influence others without resorting to force or authority as soon as you receive some resistance

How to use 9 powerful influence techniques suitable for a range of situations to positively influence others

Influence Principles

How to take advantage of empathy and listening skills to gain the trust of others and take steps to build a long term relationship

What are the 6 universal influence principles and how to use them?

Interacting with Others

How to increase your presence and make it easier to influence people

How to give feedback and expect to get results

How to influence others positively or negatively using the three primary influence dimensions

How to boost others and motivate them

How to make people feel better if they are depressed or are down

How to say No to people on your level, below you or even above you

How to praise others to encourage them strongly in the direction of your choice

Getting What You Want

How to phrase a request

How to ask others for what you want

How to use emotions to get theattention of others and use this to deliver your message for maximum effect

Audience: Anyone

Prerequisites: None

Course Duration: 1 Day

Course Level: Intermediate

Samples of How to Influence People Training Materials

Workbook

Slides

Trainer Notes

Delegates will learn ...

By the end of this course the delegates will be able to:

Sequence your statement efficiently, so that you can get maximum effect for the objective you have in mind.

Show your understanding when communicating with others and open up the conversation

Use the 6 universal principles of influence and learn how to counteract them

Deliver your potentially negative message while getting a good response

Encourage or discourage anyone strongly in the direction of your choice

Use a simple technique to reinforce the behaviour of team members

Say No decisively and politely

Phrase your sentences efficiently when selling a product or an idea

The Philosophy Behind Influence Skills Training Course

Some people might envy others on how good they are in the art of influence. However, influence is just a skill like any other. What most people may not be aware of is the incredible amount of new research carried out in this field. New technology has allowed many researchers in psychology to analyse and monitor human behaviour better than ever before. The research has opened up many areas. For example, by using a variety of survey techniques we now know the fundamental principles of influences, the long term effects of praise (in children and adults alike), human needs and how they lead to complex behaviours observed in us and many other topics.

However, this kind of research is usually very academic. You may read a book and be blown away by it but that doesn’t mean that you will be able to easily apply the principles discussed in the book to your everyday life.

This course takes advantage of the research in these areas and provides a range of step-by-step techniques that can be easily thought and used in any situation. Delegates will appreciate this kind of content, because it is easy to learn. Delegates often don’t like to be preached and certainly don’t like long speeches by a trainer. However, they are always very interested to learn specific step-by-step concise guides such as a 4 step process to provide feedback to others in order to influence them without making them feel defensive.

This course is packed with such techniques. They are relatively easy to teach yet quite effective.

Extend This Course With The Following Training Resources

Other Ideal Courses to be Used in Conjunction With How to Influence People Training Materials Are:

Testimonials

"I’ve purchased two training courses, Influence and Time management and I’ve been happy with both of them. The quality of both products is very high compare to their prices. Thank You"

Helen Davis, Cardiff, UK

"Just to let you know that we have used your training materials to deliver emotional intelligence, decision making, influencing and team building and they were excellent, high quality materials and worth every penny."

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Skills Converged is a unique company that provides professionally designed fully-customisable training course materials based on the latest research in learning & development. Courses are designed with attention to detail both on content and style so that you can deliver unique state-of-the-art courses to your clients and get maximum results.

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We can also provide this training course for your staff or your organisation anywhere in the UK. Please contact us for more details.